Reason Men Build Walls

My lover fears me.

There is too much cumbia,

         too much Selena in my walk.

         Too much Frank Ocean in my lovin’,

                   too much storm in our summer kiss.

I am too-much-sugar-pyramid on his tongue,

         too-much-Holy-Spirit, too many ancestors

         talking in a crowded room.

                   My lover fears me:

he only sees threat in my soil-brown

         eyes: a pending earthquake,

         a possession or a steep cliff, his imminent dive out the closet.

                   He fears the nature of my wild harvest,

the way I am hard fruit cracked open, soft

         inside, and his body drools.

         He is not used to the howling woman on the tip of my tongue,

                   not used to myth being truth.

Of course I’m a threat. My pulping heart is a caution

         sign, a red light he dare not cross because

         he is not a man used to the elements,

                   the ways of the Earth:

the way my love like fire ignites a forest,

         my presence lifts him between

         his thighs like wind does dust—

                   he is not used to a transient, borderless caress

like sound bath or universe energy cascading into

         cranium, jolting him into dance with me in bed

         past nirvana and all of God’s children.

                   He is a coward—a divide that swore

it would let me travel across its height without papeles.

My lover is a conditioned man since the start of time,

         a colonizer that fears the Pima Indian

         in me, the eagle, the flight, the ritual of me.

                   He fears the too-bare earth-child, the savage,

the Tarahumara in me, fears the too-bare lepe in me:

         the too-masculine, female coalescence that makes me a god:

         the healer and warrior in me.

He tried to sever parts of me during his inner war:

         tried to slice me with his love like a molten silver sword,

         he tried to fling my soft womb inflamed into abyss,

                   but with my too-much-bidi-bidi-bom-bom in my hip

too-much-Frank-Ocean in my lovin’,

         being too-much-divine and storm in the summer,

         being too good of a serpentine shapeshifter,

                   I dodged and shattered a fragile masculinity.

         I, the two spirit beast, am the reason why men build

walls, borders on their fingertips. I am the catalyst for why

         men don’t shed tears, don’t open up.

         To lovers I will always be a wild criatura, danger, a disease,

                   a howling spirit, a haunted house,

awakening, awakening, awakening

and God forbid I awaken a man in our era of silence and crosses.

         Yet, although the man that swore he loved me left runnin’,

         abandoned me, wings outstretched, crown in hand,

                   I hair-flipped knowing that silence

is the only way men will ever know how to love

         because a freedom like me exists.